Bob Simpson (cricketer) - Coaching Legacy

Coaching Legacy

Simpson inherited an Australian cricket team which had not won a series for three years, and had gone fourteen Tests without a victory. It was a team plagued by a lack of direction with unsettled personnel. His appointment saw Australia win the World Cup within one year, and steady improvement in Test results. Instilling a strong sense of discipline, higher fitness and levels of professionalism, Simpson along with Border had transformed it into one of the strongest teams in international cricket by the 1990s, and with the defeat of the West Indies in 1995, was regarded as the leading Test team in the world. The core group of players cultivated by Simpson went on to make strengthen Australia into the overwhelmingly dominant cricketing nation in the decade after his retirement. Under Taylor, Australia consolidated its position with a home series victory against the West Indies in 1996–97 and home and away wins over South Africa in 1997–98 before breaking a 39 year drought with victory in Pakistan. In 1999, Steve Waugh became captain on Taylor's retirement and in his five years as captain set a world record of 41 Test victories, including a world record of 16 consecutively. In 2004, Ricky Ponting, who made his international debut in Simpsons's last season, became captain and whitewashed Sri Lanka in an away series 3–0 and defeated India 2–1 on the subcontinent. It sealed Australia's first series win in India for 35 years, described as the "Final Frontier", and meant that Australia had defeated every other nation in each of their most recent home and away series against them. Since the 1999 Cricket World Cup, Australia has had an unbeaten streak of 28 World Cup matches and an unprecedented winning percentage of greater than 75% in Tests. With the retirement in 2007 of Warne and McGrath, the driving force between Australia's domination of the current era with more than 1,200 Test wickets between them, the generation of players established under Simpson's watch came to an end.